Want to land worst job? You need luck

I learned this week that I’ve had for much of my adult life the worst job in the United States.

There’s no worse profession to pursue than newspaper reporter, according to a new survey by CareerCast, a company that’s been ranking jobs for 25 years.

You are more likely to enjoy a fulfilled life in housecleaning, garbage collecting or lumberjacking, the highly dangerous occupation that finished 199th in the 200-job review.

Coincidentally, two days after these survey results hit the wires (old-speak for the Internet), I joined a panel at Palomar College to talk to students about careers in journalism.

Given the CareerCast pall in the air, I felt like I was recruiting a flight crew for the Hindenburg the day after the German airship burst into flames.

For years, it’s been getting harder to recommend the life of a reporter to a young person with a desire for a reasonably middle-class life. Hundreds of dailies have died or been cut back while pinning hopes on digital “platforms” geared to the future. Across the nation, operating budgets are as lean as wolves in the dead of winter.

Those who go into reporting these days have to be born with a stubbornly defiant gene that’s not deterred by near-poverty. They must reject CareerCast’s view of the plush life enjoyed by actuaries (the No. 1 job) and biomedical engineers (No. 2):

“High pay, low stress, a robust hiring outlook, a healthy work environment and minimal physical exertion combine to define what makes a great job for most people.”

Reporters, however, aren’t like most people. They’re not even like some people.

The good ones are restless, easily outraged and just as easily bored, intensely competitive, curious to the point of voyeurism. They’re born writers with so little imagination they settle for the truth.

To me, the son and grandson of reporters, the job title has always had a noble, if raffish, ring to it.

The great reporters I’ve read and known — the great Neil Morgan leaps to mind like a marlin hooked in the Sea of Cortez — enjoy a life that would be the envy of anyone.

On Broadway, the late Nora Ephron’s new play, a raucous tribute to tabloid journalism, is getting good reviews, thanks in large part to Tom Hanks’ bravura performance as Mike McAlary, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the New York Daily News.

The name of the play?

“Lucky Guy.”

That title could have been the panel discussion’s headline.

With hard work, clips and stubborn smarts, you can get lucky somewhere.